BUFFALO TWP — The Freeport School Board heard preliminary cost estimates Wednesday for its planned baseball and softball diamonds.

Tom Durkin, architect with Pittsburgh-based VEBH Architects, gave a presentation highlighting three options for each field and some cost-saving opportunities.

The high school baseball and softball teams will need new fields to play on for the spring 2017 season.

This spring, the baseball team will play on Swartz field in Freeport and the softball team, displaced by construction of the athletics complex, will play at Freeport Community Park.

The proposed location for the new fields is near the new middle school on the school’s campus off South Pike Road.

The total costs for the project are estimated to be between $1.64 million and $2.4 million, depending on what type of field surface the board decides it wants, Durkin said.

The three surface options are grass and dirt; synthetic, or turf, for both the infield and outfield; and a synthetic infield and grass outfield.

For the baseball diamond, a grass field is estimated to cost $733,000; a synthetic infield, $870,000 and all synthetic, $1.28 million.

For the softball diamond, grass surface is estimated to cost $508,000; synthetic infield, $568,000, and all synthetic, $759,000.

The board also can chose to select some cost-saving options when it awards contracts, Durkin said.

Among these options, are a public address system estimated to cost $7,000; new bleachers estimated to cost $22,000 each; and not having outfield warning tracks, which would save about $23,000 total.

The district may be able to reuse bleachers it already has on its campus

Board member Frank Prazenica said the board should be careful in considering how much money to spend.

He asked if the board’s athletics committee could meet with administrators before the next meeting to discuss the options.

“Not to be picky, but like a sound system, if they want a $7,000 sound system, they should justify to us why it’s necessary,” Prazenica said.

The board’s next step will be to approve a budget and approve a conceptual design. It could request bids for all its options and then chose what to build when it awards the contracts, but then it would spend extra money to have the architects make detailed designs that won’t be used, Durkin said.

For grass fields to be ready for the spring 2017 season, the construction would need to be finished by September 2016, so the fields could be seeded.

This means the contract would need to be awarded by May so that construction could begin by June 1, Durkin said.